I definitely still have a lot to learn with that, but I have the basics in place! It blasts off nicely and climbs fast and smooth initially. I drop to gain more horizontal speed usually at about 11k+, up to about the 1,500m/s you mentioned. I tend to skirt as high as I can without losing the airflow because the heat at those speeds is brutal! I nearly lost an RCS thruster.
Itās the last bit punching out of the atmosphere and into orbit I find tricky. Pitch up too much, and you lose all your speed/flip out of control and Jeb doesnāt get to go to space. Donāt pitch up enough and you waste a lot of fuel trying to fly near terminal velocity in the upper atmosphere! Tricky.
Iām tempted to see if the venerable MOAR BOOSTERS tradition might helpā¦
Thatās generally what you want to do. The trick is to hit 1500m/s on a 20-30 degree ascent angle from the horizon as youāre passing 15-20km range so it shoots you out of the atmosphere. This is where low drag and high TWR comes in handy but becomes difficult as you increase the size and payload of the SSTO.
Keep practicing! Getting SSTOs to orbit is every bit flight profile as it is design and they both have to compliment each other.
Haha maybe but be careful - less is more with SSTOs which is something that always surprise me. I think I need more oomph so I add more engines and it makes it harder. I take away an engine and the tank I no longer need and it flies 10x better and is easier to get to orbit.
A great example I have of less is more. I probably could have used a single rapier and no turbo jets but I wanted to switch it up plus I like the aesthetic.
PS does anyone know how to embed imgur albums these days? They sure do make it hard
Edit:
So you inspired me so I can give a couple of examples:
Starting small definitely makes it easy. This was a little hard to get off the ground but once it was I pretty much held 20 degrees pitch. I had 1400 m/s at ~18km/s with that pitch. Switched to rocket mode until 100km apo then circularized with about 400 m/s left. Handles like crap. In the second photo you can see the ārapierspikeā as well.
I deviated from spaceplanes for a while to see how robotics might be applied to a VTOL with 4 equidistant rocket motors, something like an RC droneās rotors. Perhaps Iām missing something, but I found it to be irritatingly difficult.
The symmetry mode (to get things lined up) screwed with the action groups when it came to turning the engines - because they were paired in the action group, they turned in opposite directions. Equally, placing stuff at perpendicular angles on the moving parts became annoying when it stopped snapping to certain pieces.
Are you building in the SPH or the vab? The symmetries for each work differently and if you want a plane type thing, as difficult as it is you should work in the SPH and work in sets of two engines and balance their thrust vectors through the CoM. It could be the VAB symmetry screwing things up with the action groups if youāre doing 4x.
It helps to begin with symmetric fuel tanks so you know the CoM wonāt shift throughout flight. Thereās a mod called dry CoM or something similar that can show your dry CoM in addition to fully fueled to help with that sort of balancing.
I also remember some type of bug with infernal robotics and the symmetry getting screwed up, but Iām assuming youāre using the new DLC so I canāt comment if that followed into it.
Pressing C(I think) switches the attachment type from a circle to angled and how it snaps. Taking advantage of the snap or nonsnap with that could be useful as well as the translation and rotation tools(hotkey is 2 or 3 respectively). Thereās a really good mod but I canāt exactly remember the name. Maybe editor enhancement or something that changes the angled snap so you can choose the angle of attachment from 5->90 degree spacing so you can get precise. Could help with that issue.
You can still build stock craft but use those tools to help you build. I found them super helpful but thatās all that comes to mind for that.
Took off vertically from KSC, switched to plane mode, and this is me back in vertical mode landing the island base. It was a semi-successful landing, in that only 3 of the engines were destroyed, thanks to my terrible piloting. But at least it was on target!.
Quite difficult to fly with keyboard, but functional. Only short-hop flights available at the moment due to fuel limitations.
Note: I used the hinges to move the engines this time. Iām still struggling with the servos because of the turning-in-opposite-directions-under-symmetry problem. Placing each engine manually seemed like a massive waste of time and effort.
